"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

Examining where our first destination airport may be... (Quick summary at bottom of post!)

We know teams were on AA 276, LAX-MIA (26/11 2255-0640). Connecting through Miami suggests Latin America, so we'll start our investigation there. I believe Central American countries have better direct routes from LAX, so I'll be leaving them aside for now.

Let's start with Sao Paulo, the biggest airport in South America. There's one flight leaving Miami at 9.00am, but it's a TAM/United/Continental codeshare, which makes it an unlikely connection for our teams just getting of an AA flight, on a competing airline alliance. The next flight down to Brazil isn't until 6.15pm, so I'd doubt our first destination is in Brazil.

Miami has flights to Santiago, but the first flight that teams can catch leaves at 8.20pm, 13 hours after they arrive. Doesn't sound like a very feasible itinerary for TPTB to arrange.

Next up, Lima. The first available flight leaves Miami at 3.15pm, which is pretty late. However, it's a TACA flight, which is on an opposite alliance from AA. The next flight out is an American Airlines route, but it leaves Miami at 6.30pm, arriving at 10.05pm. Compare that to the direct LAX-LIM flight, which leaves two hours before the LAX-MIA flight but arrives at 7.45am, making a whopping 14 hour difference between lead teams and trailing teams. Not too possible then?

There's an AA flight from Miami to Caracas, but I don't see any other good ways to get to Caracas from Los Angeles that arrive at a similar time. The route to the Guyanas is so complex if you try to go through Miami that I don't think TPTB would bother.

The two flights from Miami to Quito arrive at 6.10pm and 7.05pm. No other alternative routes into Quito. It's still a possibility, but all teams would have to be on the same flight from Los Angeles to Miami, making it kind of anti-climatic. The start would probably have been Miami instead.

The only flight from Miami to La Paz leaves too early for our teams to catch, and the connections through Lima don't make sense at our timings either. Other airports in Bolivia are even harder to get to.

There are flights from LAX via Miami to Bogota, with teams switching from AA to LAN, both Oneworld members. Other possible flights from LAX include connections in Mexico City, San Jose, and New York. Colombia is not ruled out by this investigation, although I'm not too sure TPTB would hold a leg there. Asuncion and Montevideo are possibilities, but they require connections through Sao Paulo or Buenos Aires. This adds a whole new level of complexity that I'm not ready to handle just yet.

Which leaves Argentina. There are three combinations, all which arrive in Buenos Aires within three hours of each other and all connections of which are on the same airline: LAN via Lima, arriving 7.05pm, Aeromexico via Mexico City, arriving 8.50pm, and AA via Miami, arriving 9.50pm. Of course, this jives with a possible Salta sighting.

Neobie, we have confirmation of at least some teams flying Miami to Buenos Aries...

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were flying from MIA to Buenos Aires. they ran right down the plane being filmed. Can't upload photos on my device, sorry!

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"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

I can't remember which early season(s) off-hand, but the show has confirmed using Miami as a connecting flight for the first leg in the past. (Amazing Yellow Line, y'all) I think it was TAR 5, but I'd have to pull out the episode and check.

I have most of the information you are looking for. The Amazing Lines for AR5, ep. 1 show 2 flights LAX MIA and another 2 MIA MVD (although I suspect that one of them was really connecting in EZE). There do not appear to be any other connecting points.

I can't remember which early season(s) off-hand, but the show has confirmed using Miami as a connecting flight for the first leg in the past. (Amazing Yellow Line, y'all) I think it was TAR 5, but I'd have to pull out the episode and check.

I thought it would be worthwhile to check out other Amazing Races where Miami was likely a key connecting point. As you know, the information on screen is not always completely reliable so we don't know for sure using that. A better approach is to look at the most likely connection points to get from a start city to an "end of first episode" city. I had to eliminate AR3 and AR11 because they started in the Miami metro area and therefore could not connect there. I discovered that none of the rest which could have gone through MIA in their first episode are likely to have done so:

I decided to put this to a reality test against the purported routes shown in the telecasts. It did not match up well. Here are the outcomes:

AR2 - two AA flights were the departures, probably both through DFW or both through MIAAR7 - AA through MIA and UA through JFKAR9 - this was the most complex, as there were 3 flights to start UA398 at 1325, CO498 at 1420 and AA932 to DFW at 1531. I have to research these past flights if possible to see where they went.AR16 - early teams were originally on a AA flight through DFW but it was delayed so all teams ended up on an AA flight to MIA.

apskip, back in those early seasons, the editors weren't as unwilling to include images that could be vidcapped to get connecting flight information and I agree TAR 5 was one of the times the Race used Miami as a connecting city. In the back of my mind I think there was one other instance, I believe it may have been TAR 3 when some teams connected to London after Mexico via Miami and others took non-stop flights without needing to connect in Miami. But I think there was one other later Race (after TAR 5) when some teams connected to South America through Miami (but not all of the teams.)

Unfortunately the best primary source for posts that found that information in those early seasons would have been TWoP (because that was where a lot of the early work was done before RFF came along), and in that era, the threads would be purged every so often due to server space issues. I'm not sure what other original sources for that type of episodic timeline reconstruction still exist; but some of this is due to the cumulative effect of airline schedule changes and mergers over the past ten years.

The reasons why I even remember this is that a filming permit was found online for a records search for WRP at Miami International Airport, and there was some suspicion that the Race start would be in South Florida; but it turned out to be filming of planes taking off at MIA to document a connecting flight out of MIA. (This was back in the day when the search engines weren't so overloaded that you could generate a gem like that without too much trouble.)

I'm not sure those early seasons ever used Toronto as a connection point for flights to the first country; I don't recall ever hearing of such flights, and IIRC, it was possible to sort out flight schedules pre-TARAS pretty accurately, since the show would always give us a flight number for those first flights.

"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

Of interest...Google Maps gives a 127 mile, 2 hour 27 min drive to LAX. Is this the longest start line drive we have ever had??

And hmmmm. BIKES? All I can imagine are sidecars....

« Last Edit: December 18, 2011, 09:50:04 AM by georgiapeach »

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"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

Also means the teams had to drive through the mountains to get to LAX, right? Which could make an interesting filming montage either for Phil's opening stand-up or the teams racing to LAX.

No, I live in LA and drive to Santa Barbara often. Most of the drive is along the coast (near Santa Barbara) which is definitely beautiful, but you don't drive through the mountains.

On a weekend afternoon with no traffic, you could easily get from Santa Barbara to LAX in an hour and a half, especially when you're in a hurry. When you drive through Oxnard and Camarillo, the roads are flat and straight and everyone's driving 80-90mph. I don't know if the race has rules about speed limits or not.

But like someone mentioned above, this is almost the same type of drive as the one between palm springs and LA, at least in terms of time in the car. It wouldn't surprise me if this trend continues and next season the race starts in the san diego/la jolla/torrey pines/carlsbad area. Many beautiful locations that are relatively close to LAX that haven't been used yet (to my knowledge)

Most of the drive is along the coast (near Santa Barbara) which is definitely beautiful, but you don't drive through the mountains.

You could save some time (unless production steers traffic to Hwy 101); San Marcos Pass road is shorter, a bit faster, more hilly and scenic but possibly not as safe.

I've driven to Santa Barbara and back over 20 times in the last few years, and I have no idea what road that is...everyone takes the 101, especially cause the signage makes it very clear that if you want to leave Santa Barbara, you get on the 101S.

Below is a map of the area surrounding the winery. The placemark is the address of Bridlewood while the red roads are the ones that the permit allows bikes and vehicles to film on. It seems like a strangely long and out of the way stretch of road to request, but the road names are sketchy and unclear around that area, so I may be wrong with my markings.

The only other thing I can think of is that the cameraguys may be using some sort of motorcycle to film with...as in riding backwards to shoot whatever the contestants are in.

I don't think we can assume yet that the racers are on bikes (motor or otherwise) but I still like the sidecar idea.

Thanks for the great Map Dom!!

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"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

A Bangkok spotting yesterday would guarantee that a team could not get back to the U.S. before today. That would be a 23 day race, which would be at the high end of races I remember since I joined RFF 6 years ago. for multiple reasons, I consider it unlikely but not absolutely impossible.

If a team were in Bangkok, the best route back to either San Francisco or Los Angeles is via Narita airport. Connecting in either Seoul or Hong Kong have longer total route times and the plane that can do a commercial route from Bangkok nonstop to the U.S. West Coast does not appear to exist now.

A Bangkok spotting yesterday would guarantee that a team could not get back to the U.S. before today. That would be a 23 day race, which would be at the high end of races I remember since I joined RFF 6 years ago. for multiple reasons, I consider it unlikely but not absolutely impossible.

If a team were in Bangkok, the best route back to either San Francisco or Los Angeles is via Narita airport. Connecting in either Seoul or Hong Kong have longer total route times and the plane that can do a commercial route from Bangkok nonstop to the U.S. West Coast does not appear to exist now.

It's not impossible for filming to still be ongoing today, but it would be odd, or there was something unusual during filming (such as a really out-of-the-way filming location) for filming to go much beyond today.

I noticed the tweet in the live spoilers thread about Honolulu, and it is conceivable that TPTB opted for a Hawaii finish, which they have done in the past (TAR 14, right?)

I wonder if the non-cluebox behavior of season 19 was continued into season 20. It does make it more difficult to spot teams. IIRC, the one live spoiler of teams and Phil earlier in this Race did not have the country sign at the mat, again, right? If so, it seems to me they've decided to hide the filming as best they can by not having things out where signs and clue boxes can be seen when teams are not in the vicinity (more than just covering up clueboxes, but using other containers that blend in).

"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan